Page 48 of Daughter of the Dark Sun
A smile crept over her face. “I have always viewed myself as beneath you, even when we fled the desert. You are my mistress, theMakhaerenbound us in blood and fire to each other.” Saiya paused, biting her lip before continuing. “I do not feel worthy of such love, but I would be a fool to reject it. Keep yourself safe, my sweet sister. Until you return.”
Folding her hands together, Saiya toyed with the ruby-encrusted ring on her thumb. She avoided Apattar’s eyes, unable to bear saying goodbye.
Apattar squeezed Saiya’s shoulder, then slunk off into the dark stairwell leading down the tower. The bittersweetness of saying goodbye was a feeling she didn’t wish to confront. It was a relief to meet another touched by the dark moon, who had heard the voice of the forgotten and slandered Goddess. Though bound by birth to Ninann, Apattar thought of Saiya as her true sister.
For the second time in her life, Apattar had to say goodbye to the only family she knew. The heartaches would never end.
Tears crashed against theimpenetrable wall constructed over the long years of torture and heartache. Apattar quickened her pace, racing through the courtyard to her chambers in the second tower. She tried to outrun her sorrows, wanted to lock them away and never acknowledge the part of her begging for love.
Crushing grief broke across her mind. A thin line of crimson blood from her nose snaked over trembling lips, dripping on the black dress hugging Apattar’s gaunt frame. Liquid fire ran through her veins, sticky sweat breaking out across flushed skin. What would it feel like to break down the wall and let years of sorrow flood out? An idle wonder; it was far too strong to dismantle now.
Choking back the tears, Apattar reached for the void and let it consume her shattered heart. It took both happiness and grief, but the reward was worth the price. Emotions made people vulnerable, allowed others to manipulate with ease. Apattar would be no such person. She only needed reason and cold, unwavering dedication to her Goddess. Apattar sank as the finer edges of reality slipped into oblivion.
Apattar could not tell how much time passed by the time she lifted her head again. For the first time since Saiya saved her from certain death, she felt as weak as her body looked. For too long, food withered in her mouth with each bite, her body intent on wasting away. Digging deep, Apattar thrust one hand into the floor, then the other, forcing her body upright.
It was a lifetime ago when she was a naive girl with vain hopes of claiming a life alongside her sister. The surety of her decision four years ago wavered, trepidation taking its place. Without her divine guidance, it would be all too easy to walk into a trap, too easy to chase after nothing except her doom.
Apattar pushed the worries aside and slipped off the heavy cotton dress tied over each shoulder. The cold air whipped at her skin without mercy. It proved to be a welcome distraction from anxieties refusing to disappear. From a simple chest, Apattar pulled out a fine silk top and skirt in black. She forgot how soft they felt in her hands, how the cloth hugged her body and brought a sense of beauty to the woman’s life.
Thigh-high slits cut into the skirt on either side, the front bolt of cloth folded in a diagonal pattern. She wrapped thick ribbons of black trimmed with silver knotwork around each leg to above the knee, tall black boots pulled on over them. The silk shirt billowed out, held in place with a cinched corset around her waist. She pulled a black veil over her thick curls—a useful tool to hide her face if the need arose.
Apattar’s hands lingered over the black fingerless gloves Saiya gave her long ago during their first sojourn beyond the Wall. It was easy to forget the blue doves and flaming suns splayed across her hands and forearms. They never meant anything to her, an empty gesture of a family she only belonged to in name. Apattar was loath to acknowledge the status of her birth, but ignoring the fact could prove fatal. With a grimace, she pulled the gloves on, looping each ring finger through the tiny band on the ends of the half-gloves.
As she took in her black-cloaked form in a simple mirror, the glint of something silver caught the corner of Apattar’s gaze. She moved closer to the source.
There, in the dim candlelight on the cream-colored sheets of her bed, lay a dagger with a long black blade. Shadows seemed toshift and dance under the surface. Tarnished with age, a smear of what looked to be dried blood covered the hilt.
The blade sang out to Apattar. As she edged closer, the light revealed a burnt piece of parchment with two lines of text. The top line was more of the strange, ancient language the two women encountered in the hidden passages of the Sunmaiden’s Crypt. Below it, written in an awkward and ill-spaced hand, was a single sentence:
Use it well,lyneithra.
Apattar picked up the dagger, curling her fingers around the silver hilt. The shadows swirling through the blade hummed with approval. They leached from it and twisted themselves around her arm, resonating with the void below the surface of her cool skin. Shivers ran across Apattar’s flesh as goosebumps formed. The blade felt like a perfect extension of herself, a piece she never knew was missing until found.
A thin line of crimson blood snaked across the blade as Apattar drew her thumb over it. Quickfire pain burst through the exposed nerves and to the center of her brain. The sensation bordered on pleasurable. Unsure why, Apattar smeared her blood across the hilt. The bright red liquid melted into the tarnished silver and disappeared.
Something about the blade screamedsacred,as if once wielded in Lady Eithranren’s name against her enemies. Apattar smiled and tucked the blade into a leather strap around her right thigh.
Armed and ready to face the world again, she opened a portal to the endless golden sands of her home, aiming for the small oasis with a crescent moon-shaped lake she once stumbled intoby accident. Suffocating heat billowed through the milky opaque portal. Gaze sweeping across the room one last time, Apattar grabbed a large satchel with food and stepped through the shimmering surface.
The hunt began.
twenty-four
Stumbling Blind
Skin peeled and flakedaway from the woman’s face. Bruises bloomed under her eyes like a twisted cluster of bloody roses. With a sickening crack of joints, her head lolled to the side. Her lips wrenched apart from the sudden movement, slackened jaw spilling forth congealed blood. Color drained from eyes once a brilliant blue like the morningflowers crawlingthrough cemeteries. Now clouded with death, they stared in accusation at their murderer.
“Gods be damned, how does Ninann do it?”
Therat hovered his hands over the corpse’s chest, threads of blue and silver light shimmering from his fingertips. Arms trembled with fatigue before falling to his side. The light vanished. Shadows descended on the body, curling over the decayed flesh like a death shroud. Grumbling to himself, Therat looked down at what remained of the nameless woman. He hadn’t wanted to kill her. He struggled to control his mind, wanted to stop even as the Shadow-weave tore into her supple flesh and rent muscle from bone. The tangle of black whispers in his mind did not care; they were never satisfied.
This time was different. This time, Therat needed to keep the woman alive. After near four years of combing the desert, he finally had a clue.
“Please, please! I need her!” His shouts faded to the empty desert. “She knows something. This isn’t enough! What is in the West? Come back to me, please!”
Stale air surrounded the man and corpse. Blood wove its way through the grooved tiles of the wayside shrine, small lakes forming from the life once flowing through the woman. Behind him, a headless statue of Myrniar holding the sun cast a shadow over his wretched crime. The dead woman’s eyes stared with fervent accusation, streaks of black invading the edges. The shadows around her grew deeper, wrapping around light olive tan skin. They hungered for the remains, extending tendrils like a parasite ready to feast. Therat waved his hands over the woman’s body and they fled.
The woman before him was thin and sickly, even before his cursed Shadow-weave devoured her life. Ribs stuck out and formed vast canyons of sunken skin across her chest. Hundreds of tiny cuts and old scars covered nearly every inch of the womansave her hands and feet. Therat’s gaze moved up to her face, destroyed on one side. A thin white scar extended past a bloody clump of hair on her left temple.
